In Ubuntu 11.04 Unity, you might prefer the left launcher bar but dislike the searching-style app menu in top-panel. Mac-like dock has classic app menu but there also has many useless shortcut icons that already shown in left launcher bar.

Although we cannot replace the top-panel with the classic gnome-panel, there’s a classic start menu can be added onto left launcher bar. See effect:

Steps:

1.) Open up a terminal window and install cardapio from PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cardapio-team/unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cardapio

2.) Create a launcher by:

mkdir ~/.local/share/applications
gksudo gedit ~/.local/share/applications/Cardapio.desktop

copy and paste following :

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=cardapio
Name=menu
Icon=gnome-main-menu

Then close and save it.

3.) In nautilus file browser, navigate to “.local/share/applications” (Press Ctrl+H to view hidden files) and then drag and drop Cardapio.desktop onto left Launcher.


4.) Adjust the pop-up menu location.

Before this, when you click the icon on Launcher it pops-up the menu in middle area of screen. To adjust the pop-up location, open up CompizConfig-Setting-Manager(run sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager if not installed) and click into the configuration page of Place Windows.

In Fixed Window Placement tab, click New under Windows with Fixed Positions:

type “name=cardapio” (without quotes) after Positioned windows
check “Keep in work area”
set proper value of x or y positions

Cardapio on Launchpad.net: https://launchpad.net/cardapio